Deadly Passion, an Epiphany (10 page)

When he started dating her, they’d still been in college. That was before he became a member of the Path to Glory group. Whatever they did, it was for Allah and for the good of Islam, they told him. At first, he’d been a loyal soldier. But as time passed, many doubts troubled him. He was after all an American now, born in America, raised in the USA, and now dating an American woman whom he wanted to marry and settle down with.

Their leader wanted Azim to stop seeing Izzy, to break off the relationship completely. Azim tried, but he loved her far too much. His mother was against them dating, hated Izzy with a passion. His mother’s friends and her cousins were all against them. He’d felt so cornered. There was only one solution—when the leader bestowed the honor upon him to give his life for Allah and Islam, he agreed. He and Izzy would be in Paradise together for eternity. He was sure Allah wouldn’t frown upon him for being in love with her.

Before going to the club, he’d almost backed out, but his fear of his leader was deep rooted. He’d seen Abdul maim members for disloyalty, or worse, kill some of his comrades. The man’s temper was fierce. Many a time Azim regretted having joined the group, but he’d gone to a few meetings at the insistence of several of his cousins. He’d been so young then, not even in college yet. His mother approved, encouraged him, and he’d wanted to please her.

Azim thought about the father he couldn’t remember, the father who’d been killed by Americans, according to his mother. His father had gone back to Afghanistan to visit his ailing father. While he was there, a stray bomb had flattened his grandparents’ home. They blamed the Americans, but who knew for sure?

While in college, he’d also studied the Christian religion. Its similarities were great. There was only one God, and he had a prophet, a Son. Jesus and Mohammed could have been the same man. The vow he’d taken when joining the group came to mind—
In the name of Allah the Avenger, I swear on the holy book to perform my sacred duty as a soldier of Islam in this Jihad to restore to this world the light of divine justice... Allah demands no less. For to die in the cause is to be sent immediately to Paradise.

It was the vow that led him to believe he and Izzy would be in Paradise together with none of the world’s opposition bothering them.
Izzy, where are you?
A sound startled him out of his musings and he finally paid attention to his surroundings. Where in blazes was he? The sky above him was dark gray, the ground beneath his bare feet, hard clay. He noticed forbidding mountains with jagged peaks. Near him were black boulders as big as a house. Shadows came toward him. Azim stepped back. They looked like apes, or worse, some resembled gorillas, but they walked upright like humans. Their faces were grotesque, slime dripping from ugly lips. He stepped back again, only to end up with his back against a big rock. He was trapped. He glanced to both sides but there was no way out, no escape. To his left he now noticed an edge. He stood near the rim of a very steep cliff. Leaning sideways, he saw there was no way he could jump down. It was far too deep and far below he saw glowing embers. A volcano?

The largest gorilla stepped closer to Azim. He could smell its foul breath. Holding his own, he waited for the inevitable, for it to attack and tear him to shreds. He chuckled at that thought. Shouldn’t he have been in shreds already? Where the hell was he anyway?

“We have a newcomer!”

Damn, the thing spoke English. Thing? More like a monster.

“Fuckin’ puny little bastard!”

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“You can call me Sam. And if you don’t know where you are, I ain’t gonna tell you.”

“You’re not human, but you speak my language.”

“I’m as human as you, motherfucker.”

“But you look like—“

“Take a fuckin’ look at yourself, bozo. You ain’t so different from us.”

Azim held on to the rock face behind him. “Don’t be stupid. You look like some sort of gorilla.”

This caused a rumble of laughter, if one could call it that, from the group behind Sam. A smaller monster stepped to the front. When Azim focused, he noticed the breasts underneath the coarse dark hair that covered the body. Beneath all that body hair, they resembled humans. “Are you aliens?”

“Sure. Call us fuckin’ aliens. See if we care,” the woman said in a coarse voice.

“There was a woman with me. Where is she?”

“Who knows. Do you want to join us?”

“No thanks. I’m going to look for Izzy.”

“Good luck fuckin’ findin’ her.” Sam grunted and motioning his troupe to follow him, left.

Azim was alone again. He walked closer to the cliff’s edge and gazed down at the volcano. Heat rose from it. It was so hot it almost felt like it seared his face. Unconsciously, he rubbed his forehead and withdrew his hand in shock. He felt the rest of his face. It was covered in coarse hair. Now, he ripped at his shredded jacket, tore it off and the shirt remnants, to see his arms and hands covered in long coarse black hair. His nails were like talons. His chest was matted with the hair. “Oh my God!” he shouted. “I’m a monster, like them!” He watched Sam and his troupe disappearing in the distance.

Backing away from the edge, he peered around. Between several of the boulders he saw paths. Maybe they led somewhere. He chose the widest one. It was dark between the rocks. Shivering, he watched strange reptiles dart away as he walked. Spiders the size of a football crept up the sides of the rock walls. Slimy green oozed from crevices, and the stench was unbearable.

The winding path seemed to go on forever. He stopped to wipe sweat off his brow, withdrawing his hand in disgust. His face horrified him, his body disgusted him. What had these aliens done to him? The boulders stopped and the path opened to a much wider one. On the right were strange, alien trees. Black branches, no leaves, as if they’d been burned. Yet when he broke off a branch, it wasn’t dead wood. To his left was a sea of what looked like lava. It churned in places, bubbled, and acrid steam and smoke rose from the orange liquid. Screams almost deafened him. They came from things that kept rising from the lava. When he peered closer, his eyes smarting from the acrid smoke, he saw they were monsters, their bodies covered in lava, their body-hair on fire. Yet they didn’t burn up. It was too weird to comprehend. Why didn’t they just leave that burning pit? Or was that where they lived?

Azim continued on, climbing steadily now. He came to a wide chasm, the lava churning far below. Through the haze, he saw some kind of a structure, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was. Wondering what to do next, he sat on a rock beside the path, his mind in turmoil. Izzy, he had to find her. But how? Where? But maybe she wasn’t here, maybe these alien things hadn’t snatched her. There had to be a more advanced species. The monsters he’d met surely weren’t capable of space travel, advanced technology? If only he could get to the other side of the chasm, investigate the structure barely visible through the smoky haze.

So the bomb had never gone off. Strange enough, he felt relief. During his years as a soldier for Path of Glory he’d seen so many deaths, executions, people being tortured. He’d never had to kill anyone, until they’d chosen him to carry the bomb, to execute a suicide mission. Why they’d picked the nightclub, he had no idea. Unless they knew that certain government officials would go to the club that particular night. Except for Izzy, he’d been so unhappy with his life, his inability through his fear to leave the group of terrorists, his mother’s opposition to his relationship with Izzy, that the mission seemed to be an easy answer.

Inwardly though, he’d been terrified. The leader had assured him it would be very fast and he wouldn’t feel a thing. After they threatened him with torture, he’d finally agreed. And now here he was. A failed mission. It had all been for nothing. How had the aliens disabled the bomb without him noticing anything? It was a mystery, especially since his clothes were in tatters and burned, as if it had gone off. But then there’d be nothing left of him. It made no sense.

Thinking back to their evening at the club, how romantic it was, how sweet Izzy had been and how sexy she’d looked with her beautiful long black hair cascading down her back, the white evening gown almost making her look like a bride and showing off her creamy complexion. She was beautiful enough to be a movie star and he felt very lucky she’d fallen in love with him. He drank a lot throughout the evening to dull his fear, to give him courage. The booze also dulled his mind, made the evening a foggy memory, except for that last dance just before midnight when he had to trigger the device. She’d felt so good in his arms. When she’d rubbed her pelvis against him, his cock sprang to attention and he was ready to abandon everything and take her home, ask her to marry him and move away, far away.

The last he remembered was glancing at his watch, at the second hand moving toward midnight, his lips on Izzy’s, his finger on the button that would set off the bomb. How many would have been killed in the explosion? How many people maimed for life? He shivered as he pictured it all happening and bile rose to his throat. Was he really capable of such a horror? Committing multiple murders? That wasn’t him. What had he been thinking? Why was he such a pussy?

A creaking noise startled him. It appeared to come from the other side of the chasm. He peered and saw a bridge sliding mysteriously toward him. Two loud clicks sounded as it locked into place just below the edge. He stood and hesitantly stepped forward, onto it, then ran quickly to the other side. His throat felt parched, his lungs smarted from the acrid air and he stood panting for a few moments. Several monsters pounced on him, clapped his wrists in irons attached to a chain. They pulled him along toward the structure. He stumbled several times, almost fell, only to be yanked up hard. The iron cuffs bit into his wrists. “What do you want with me?” he yelled.

No answer.

The structure finally took shape. It resembled an old gothic castle. Huge wooden doors opened, their hinges creaking and groaning. Up stone stairs, into the castle, they dragged him along corridors, then down winding stairs. The air was damp, foul. Azim coughed. He couldn’t stop coughing until a punch in the gut caused him to gasp for air instead. They threw him into a cell that was dimly lit by sconces on the wall outside the cell. There was nothing in it except a pile of straw on the floor. The monsters shackled him to the wall, left and he heard the iron door slam shut and a key turned to lock it.

When the dead talk…

Azim had no idea how long he’d been in the cell. It stank of his excrements. He felt like an animal. Once a day one of the monsters shoved a bowl of slop and a bowl of water through a small opening in the bars. At first, he didn’t want to eat it, but hunger gnawed at him and he ended up eating the horrible gruel, not even wondering anymore what it was. Unless he pushed the bowls near the bars, he’d get nothing the next day. He found that out soon enough. All he could do was think about the mess he’d made of his life. Occasionally, he dared to think about Izzy, but tried to put her out of his mind. He’d decided she was lost to him forever, wherever she was. He dwelled on his bitter mother, on the people he’d seen murdered, on his comrades that pretended to be his friends. But were they really? They’d corrupted him, but hadn’t he allowed himself to be corrupted?

Was it even night or day? He didn’t have a clue. He started making scratches on the wall each time his food came until there was no space left, not within reach. His shackles and chains only allowed him to reach so far.

Curling into a ball close to the wall, he closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come, for the nightmares to attack him.

A voice spoke. “Azim, it’s time to prove yourself.”

He sat up. He hadn’t heard the cell door creak, hadn’t heard the large key turn the lock, yet near the other wall stood a man dressed in jeans and a white shirt. He leaned casually against the wall, one foot drawn up against it. Azim peered. The man was cleanly shaven, his hair neatly groomed. Black eyes regarded him. It was a face he knew, a face he had to dig up from his deepest buried memories. “Father? You’re dead. How—“

“I’m not dead, as you can see.”

“Where have you been all these years?”

“I came to see you, son, but you refused to acknowledge my presence.”

“It’s not true. This is a hallucination.”

“Far from it.”

“Mother—“

“She closed her mind. She disowned me, son.”

“Why? I remember her tears. She became a bitter woman. Why don’t I remember you visiting us?”

“You don’t want to remember. But now it is time to prove yourself. Come with me.”

“I can’t. I’m shackled to the wall. Don’t you see that?”

“Stand up, son.”

Azim carefully tried to stand. At first his legs felt wobbly, but then he felt invigorated at the knowledge that he could finally stand. The shackles dropped off his wrists and ankles. He was free. Wonderingly, he looked at the man who was his father. “How—“

“Come with me, Azim.”

There were no monsters outside his cell. Azim followed his father down the dim halls, then up a spiral stairwell. They stepped through a door. Astonished, Azim noticed they now stood on a verandah. The patio doors were open. Inside, people sat around a very long table. It looked to be a dinner party. Several children were present, one of them in a highchair.

“Do you see that man at the head of the table, Azim?” his father said.

“Yes. What about him?”

“That is the man your group of terrorists had targeted the night you had to carry out your mission. His name is Jonathan DuPlessis, a well-known government official. The pretty brunette beside him is his wife Jolene and the children are theirs. The table has a bomb attached to it underneath. This is the device that will detonate it. Here, take it.”

Azim felt a small device shoved into his hands. He stared at the happy gathering, the children laughing, the woman feeding the baby. He shook his head. “I can’t do it.”

“Son, if you want to prove yourself a man, worthy, you have to. Make me proud of you.”